Apr 17, 2011

IS GOD ANGRY? Something to think about on this Sunday morning...

"I tremble for my country when I reflect God is just; His justice cannot sleep forever."

- Thomas Jefferson

IS GOD ANGRY? On this Sunday morning, this is a question that should be at or near the top of every sermon being preached in churches throughout a potentially great, but deeply disturbed country that some insist on calling "a Christian nation."

IS GOD ANGRY? This is a question that should come to mind every time a governor from one of the states in America's so-called "Bible belt" is compelled to declare a state of emergency in the immediate aftermath of a devastating storm.

IS GOD ANGRY? Truth be told, this is an urgent question that every human being, of every faith tradition, across this tortured planet should be asking themselves right now - before it's too late! Is God angry?

El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan

"Civilization is based on justice, and the consequences of oppression are devastating. Therefore, it is said, ALLAH (God Almighty) aids the just state, even if it is non-Muslim; yet withholds His help from the oppressive state, even if it is Muslim." - Sheikh ibn Taymeeyah (r)

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Brand Ahmadinejad rights abuser: US senators

Fri Apr 15, 3:34 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should formally brand Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and 25 other current and former Iranian officials as human rights abusers, senators urged Friday.

The lawmakers pointed to Clinton's comments, in a March 2 Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, that there was "certainly evidence" that Iran's leadership, including Ahmadinejad, abused human rights.

The senators also noted that the European Union had designated 32 current or former Iranian officials as rights abusers, and that the United States has only done the same for seven of the people on that list.

"Therefore, we urge you to immediately investigate for possible designation as human rights abusers the following 25 individuals listed by the European Union as Iranian human rights abusers," they said in the letter, which was obtained by AFP.

What despicable hypocrites these politicians are! The person who I received the above report from wrote the following about the four senatorial stooges referenced therein (Kirk, Kyl, Gillibrand, and Lieberman):"Maybe they should wait til AFTER they close Guantanamo and free Bradley Manning.."

We could add many more U.S. generated "maybe they should wait" qualifiers to that list - i.e. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and all of the wrongfully imprisoned young Muslims throughout America (and abroad) who have been preemptively prosecuted and ripped away from their families, with monstrous sentences hanging over their heads; the aged political prisoners from the 1960s on, who still occupy the American gulag (and are slowly dying off); the profit and empire driven wars which currently engulf a large segment of the earth's population; and the environmental devastation being caused by soulless capitalists throughout the planet, leading to an almost suffocating uncertainty of what tomorrow may bring.

At Least 25 Dead After Deadly Storm System Rips Through 6 States

Apr 17, 2011 – 6:41 AM

Mike Baker and Tom Breen

AP

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A furious storm system that kicked up tornadoes, flash floods and hail as big as softballs has claimed at least 25 lives on a rampage that began in Oklahoma days ago, then smashed across several Southern states as it reached a new and deadly pitch in North Carolina and Virginia.

Emergency crews searched for victims in hard-hit swaths of North Carolina, where 62 tornadoes were reported from the worst spring storm in two decades to hit the state. At least a half dozen people died just in the Carolinas and Virginia and authorities warned the toll was likely to rise further Sunday as searchers probed shattered homes and businesses.

Authorities said at least five people were killed in North Carolina and at least three more in neighboring Virginia during the storm's passage Saturday before the sprawling, potent storm bands moved eastward over the Atlantic.

The storms claimed its first lives Thursday night in Oklahoma, then roared through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Seven people each were killed in Arkansas and Alabama, two people in Oklahoma and one person in Mississippi, authorities have said. One of the dead was an elderly man whose trailer was tossed nearly a quarter mile across a state highway.

In North Carolina, Gov. Beverly Perdue declared a state of emergency after reporting fatalities in at least four counties. But she declined to immediately confirm an exact number of deaths. She said the 62 tornadoes reported were the most since March 1984, when a storm system spawned 22 twisters in the Carolinas that killed 57 people - 42 in North Carolina - and injured hundreds.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody in North Carolina who has been through this horrible day," Perdue said.

Authorities in North Carolina said they would provide more details of the death toll later Sunday after checking on the reports of fatalities in at least four counties and in the capital city of Raleigh. Search and rescue teams operated through the night, Perdue said, with damage assessments starting in earnest Sunday after daylight.

"There's a lot of work that needs to be done in these areas that are most heavily impacted," said Doug Hoell, the state's director of emergency management. "There's a lot of debris out there that's got to be cleaned up."

In Virginia, disaster officials said one apparent tornado ripped more than 12 miles long through Gloucester County, uprooting trees and pounding homes to rubble while claiming three lives. Another person was confirmed dead and another remained missing early Sunday after flash flooding elsewhere in Virginia.

Scenes of destruction across the South looked eerily similar in many areas.

In North Carolina, rooftops were ripped off stores, trees were plucked from the ground and scores of homes were damaged, Hoell said.

At one point more than 250,000 people went without power in North Carolina before emergency utility crews began repairing downed lines. But scattered outages were expected to linger at least until Monday before power was fully restored..

Among areas hit by power outages was Raleigh, a bustling city of more than 400,000 people where some of the bigger downtown thoroughfares were blocked by fallen trees early Sunday.

The storm sweeping into North Carolina moved from the state's western mountain reaches to the coast on Saturday amid utter devastation in some places.

Police and rescue crews began conducting house-to-house searches later Saturday at a mobile home park in north Raleigh, where the storm snapped some trees in half, ripped others out of the ground and tossed some trailers from one side of a street to the other.

In Sanford, about 40 miles southwest of Raleigh, a busy shopping district was pummeled by the storms, with some businesses losing rooftops in what observers described as a ferocious tornado. The Lowe's Home Improvement Center in Sanford looked flattened, with jagged beams and wobbly siding sticking up from the pancaked entrance. Cars in the parking lot were flipped by the winds.

"It's very, very bad here," said Monica Elliott, who works at the nearby Brick City Grill. "We saw a tornado that just rode up over the restaurant."

Remarkably, no one was seriously injured at the Lowe's, thanks to a quick-thinking manager who herded more than 100 people into a back area with no windows to shatter.

"It was really just a bad scene," said Jeff Blocker, Lowe's regional vice president for eastern North Carolina. "You're just amazed that no one was injured."

Cindy Hall, a Red Cross volunteer and outreach minister at First Baptist Church in Sanford, said dozens of homes in the area were damaged.

"It wiped out our St. Andrews neighborhood, which includes about 30 homes," she said. To the west, hikers stranded by flash floods had to be rescued.

In Virginia, Department of Emergency Management spokesman Bob Spieldenner, said an apparent tornado ploughed through communities of Gloucester County, destroying or damaging homes, uprooting trees in a quiet farming and fishing region along the Chesapeake Bay.

"I know it was a pretty long path," he said of the reported tornado. "They estimated it was 12 to 14 miles" based on 911 emergency calls.

Authorities said at least three deaths had been confirmed in Gloucester County and at least 60 were injured, most with minor injuries. Spieldenner said one person was killed when a vehicle ran into flash flooding near Waynesboro and another person was missing and a third rescued.

He reported homes and mobile homes damaged and destroyed in a series of other Virginia counties and flash flooding west of Charlottesville that prompted water rescues - including four people rescued unhurt from a car that had plunged into deep water flowing over a street.

Firefighter Killed as Wildfires Sweep Across Texas

Apr 16, 2011 – 8:48 AM

Angela K. Brown - AP

GRAHAM, Texas -- A day after losing one of their own, firefighters returned to the front lines Saturday to battle wildfires sweeping across hundreds of thousands of acres in Texas that have destroyed dozens of homes.

Strong winds and drought-stricken grasses and shrubs are fueling the fires that forced hundreds of evacuations, including an entire town, and destroyed at least 60 homes on Friday. Firefighters worked overnight as the blazes burned across about 655 sq. miles, according to the Texas Forest Service.

Some of the fires have been burning for a week or more, including three in West Texas that have charred a combined 400,000 acres.

Volunteer firefighter Gregory M. Simmons, 51, died while battling a 3,000-acre blaze Friday afternoon near Eastland, a town about 130 miles west of Dallas, Eastland Mayor Mark Pipkin said. Simmons had been a firefighter for two decades, including 11 years in Eastland, the mayor said.

"Apparently he was overcome by smoke, fell in a ditch and was consumed" by the fire, said Justice of the Peace James King, who pronounced Simmons dead at the scene along a rural road.

No other injuries have been reported.

A blaze destroyed about 30 homes and left a thick gray haze across the sky as it burned about 20,000 acres around Possum Kingdom Lake, a popular recreation spot about 120 miles west of Dallas. By nightfall, a deep red glow was hovering on the horizon as thick billows of smoke were illuminated by the flames.

Officials closed the surrounding state park and evacuated campsites earlier Friday, fearing that the fire would block off the only access roads to the wooded area.

"The fire, it's a bad one," Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Rob McCorkle said. "This is pretty unusual to have this many fires going across the state at the time."

Three large fires burning in Wichita County, about 150 miles northwest of Dallas near the Oklahoma border, had destroyed about 20 homes in the Iowa Park area. Eight more were lost in Wichita Falls, where folks in surrounding communities were being told to stay alert to the fast-changing situation.

"There's just a lot of hoping that nothing else happens," said Barry Levy, a Wichita Falls spokesman.

A military housing complex near Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls was evacuated for about two hours as the fire threatened to move in, but no buildings were damaged, base spokesman George Woodward said.

"It got close enough to scare a lot of people," Woodward said.

Wildfires near Eastland also prompted officials to evacuate the 1,200-resident town of Gorman, including the school and nursing home, said city clerk Jill Rainey. Evacuations also were ordered for about 200 homes in the Possum Kingdom area and some in small communities north of San Angelo and Andrews, along the Texas-New Mexico border. Shelters were set up for people who had to leave their homes.

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Some of the fires have been raging for days, though high wind gusts on Friday sparked even more fires that raced across pastures and roadsides to consume areas the size of a football field in a minute.

Strong winds are typical for spring, but this March was the driest in Texas since 1895, said Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Holly Huffman.

In West Texas, a fire sparked by a welder's torch 10 days ago had grown to about 105,000 acres in Stonewall, King and Knox counties by Friday, while another 149,000-acre fire that began earlier this week continued raging in Kent, Stonewall and Fisher counties. A separate fire that started nearly a week ago has spread to 165,000 acres in Jeff Davis County, about 200 miles east of El Paso.

"There's an overabundance of very dry vegetation and it serves as kindling," Huffman said.

Associated Press writers and Matt Curry and Linda Stewart Ball in Dallas and Juan Carlos Llorca in El Paso contributed to this report.

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Earthquake Shakes Australia, New Zealand

Apr 16, 2011 – 6:19 AM - AP

BRISBANE, Australia -- Moderate earthquakes rattled parts of Australia and New Zealand on Saturday, including the devastated city of Christchurch where power was cut to thousands of homes, officials said.

No major damage was reported from either quake, and no tsunami warning was issued.

The magnitude-5.2 quake that struck Christchurch was far less powerful than one that leveled office blocks and homes in the New Zealand city on Feb. 22, killing at least 169 people and devastating the downtown area.

Energy supplier Orion said Saturday's quake cut power to about 20,000 homes and businesses in the city, but officials were working quickly to restore service. No other damage was reported.

Christchurch has been hit by scores of aftershocks since the February disaster.

Eighteen minutes before New Zealand's earthquake Saturday, a magnitude-5.2 quake hit about 80 miles (125 kilometers) southeast of the Australian coastal city of Townsville in Queensland state, at a depth of about 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the ocean floor.

"It scared my daughter enough that she jumped on the couch with me and my windows were rattling," Townsville local government councilor Natalie Marr said.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported from Queensland that residents of several towns and cities along the coast felt the quake.

Almost 300 million people were affected by natural disasters in 2010. The large disasters provided constant headlines throughout the year, beginning with the devastating earthquake in Haiti followed one month later by the even more severe—but far less deadly—earthquake in Chile. In the spring, ash spewing from volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland paralyzed flights for weeks in the northern hemisphere. Early summer witnessed the worst Russian wildfires in history while a few months later, the steadily rising floodwaters in Pakistan covered 20 percent of the country. In sum, it was a terrible year in terms of natural disasters causing havoc and destruction around the globe. However, many of the largest disasters barely made headlines in the Western press.

Most notably, over 130 million Chinese were affected by the worst flooding in recent history—this is more than five times the number of people affected by the earthquake in Haiti and the Pakistani floods combined—but the Chinese floods received far less international attention than either Pakistan or Haiti. The example of the Chinese floods illustrates one of the dilemmas in response to natural disasters, which is that disasters, even major ones, receive significantly diverging media coverage. In the case of China, although over 130 million people were affected and some 4,000 were reported killed or missing,1 very little international assistance was provided or requested. There was no overall United Nation funding appeal for those affected. The widely-regarded web-portal Reliefweb posted only 243 entries on the Chinese floods, primarily from the Chinese News Agency, in comparison with 10 times that number of entries on the flooding in Pakistan which occurred several months later in the year and affected around 20 million people.

Apart from the few large—or what some even call mega-disasters—like the Haiti earthquake and the floods in China and Pakistan, the majority of disasters in 2010 were "smaller" disasters. Those disasters, smaller in scope and scale, from the Philippines to Guatemala and from Niger to Venezuela, are also deadly, causing significant human suffering and displacement and had economic, social, and in some instances, political consequences.

"Corruption has appeared on the land and on the sea, on account of what men's hands have wrought. ALLAH will make them taste a part of what they have done, so that they might return (from evil transgressions)." - The Noble Qur'an (30; 41)